Today is my last day as Director of the Congressional Budget Office; tomorrow, my successor will begin his term.
In my first blog post at CBO six years ago, I wrote that I was “honored to be appointed to this position and excited to be joining the talented and dedicated analysts here at CBO.” I feel that way even more strongly today. It has been an extraordinary privilege to lead CBO for the past six years and to have the opportunity to work with my amazing colleagues.
I want to express my appreciation to the leaders of the Congressional committees for which CBO works, particularly the House and Senate Budget Committees, and the leadership of the House and the Senate—of both parties—for their support of me and of our entire organization. I also want to thank the many Members of Congress and the smart and committed Hill staffers with whom I have interacted during the past six years. Their hard and important questions, and the collegiality they have extended to me and others at CBO, have helped to make this time so educational and enjoyable. I am also grateful to many colleagues in the economics profession for their thoughtful insights and to CBO’s former directors for their wise counsel.
Most of all, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the people of CBO. Their skill, hard work, and commitment to high-quality, objective analysis are what make CBO great. When confronted with factual questions about particular programs or issues, they know the answers or can find them quickly. When challenged with difficult analytical questions, they develop thoughtful answers. When faced with deadlines that seem impossible to meet, they often meet them. (Some actually are impossible.) And when offered suggestions for different approaches, they regularly improve on those suggestions.
Those traits, together with a tremendous warmth and generosity of spirit, are what make them ideal colleagues. The opportunity to work with them and learn from them has been a highlight of my tenure at CBO, which has been even more rewarding and fun than I’d imagined six years ago. I am incredibly lucky to have spent this time here, and I am very proud of the way we have served the Congress and the country during this challenging period.
CBO’s mission, of course, goes on. For 40 years, CBO has provided the Congress with careful, objective analysis of budgetary and economic issues for use in making the difficult policy choices the country has faced. I am confident that this extraordinary institution will continue to do that for many years to come.